The Renovator

Author's Notes: This is another "What if" scenario of a wife that takes too much for granted— especially her husband. She craves passion and looks for it in the wrong place. She makes assumptions that are not accurate. Situations like this would probably not occur in more than one-in-a-million relationships. In this case, this IS that one-in-a-million combination of personalities and circumstances.

This story has been sitting in my computer for several months because I haven't been able to get an editor. So, rather than delay it any more and give myself a chance to write other stories, this story is submitted without an editor. Feel free to critique my grammar, punctuation and spelling—and anything else about the story that needs work.

Characters:

- Zane Gavin: House renovator

- Bryce Gavin: Zane's wife

- Andrea Gavin: Daughter of Zane and Bryce

Onward...

Zane loved real estate closings whether or not he was buying the house or selling the house. When he bought a house, he was always certain he was getting a good deal, a house that was under-valued and potentially worth tens of thousands of dollars to him. When he sold a house, he loved getting the big check that confirmed his original estimate of its worth.

Zane was fifty-two years old. He had been rehabbing houses for thirty-two years. He was good at it and it provided him with a very good income. He lived in a very nice home that he had, in fact, renovated. The fact that he got it for a song and it was in a very upscale neighborhood provided him with instant equity that was double what he paid for it as soon as a few improvements were made. And, considering he paid for it in cash like he bought all his properties, his equity doubled as soon as he renovated it since there was no mortgage.

Zane had come from a lower middle-class family. When he graduated from high school, his family didn't have enough money to send him to college. He ended up becoming a licensed carpenter and then a licensed cabinetmaker. For a young man, he made good money in the construction business. And, since he lived at home, he was able to save a fair amount of his paycheck each month. He intended to enroll in community college and start studying to become a mechanical engineer. However, he got sidetracked by his renovation business.

The way he started out was almost an accident. While building some cabinets for a friend in an area of lower cost condominiums, Zane noted a nearby condo that was being cleared out of furniture and belongings. There was a "For Sale" sign in the yard. He made it a point to wander over to the condo and talk to the owner. However, it turned out that the man doing most of the work was the realtor for the owner. He showed Zane through the two-bedroom, ground-level condo. It was very dilapidated: The carpets were worn and stained, the walls had holes in them, bifold doors were hanging loose, the cabinetry was marred, the windows were painted shut and the appliances were not functioning properly.

The realtor made the comment that the renters had pretty well trashed the place and the out-of-town owner wanted to unload it ASAP.

Zane asked, "How much?"

The realtor said, "One-hundred and fifty thousand dollars." And then he added, "According to the comps, similar condos—in good shape— in the neighborhood are selling at two-hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars."

Based on his knowledge of construction costs, Zane guessed that he could fix the place up better than new for about twenty-five or thirty thousand dollars. However, Zane didn't have one-hundred and fifty thousand dollars. He did have enough for a twenty percent down payment. The realtor suggested a bank he was familiar with that specialized in reconstruction loans—loans that included the funds needed to renovate properties. The realtor said he would help Zane through the loan process.

Fortunately, Zane had good credit and a history of paying his bills on time. Nevertheless, he had to provided what seemed like an endless list of his finances, his estimates as a contractor of the cost of improvements and the realtor's comps on similar condos in the area. The approval for the loan took several weeks—after which he became a property owner.

Since Zane had a day job, he could only work on the condo in his spare time and renovations moved along slowly. So, he hired some out-of-work day-laborers to do some of the work. That was a big mistake. Not only did they do half-assed work, Zane had to undo some of their shoddy workmanship. All this took time while Zane was paying the mortgage, homeowner's insurance, the condo fees, utilities and taxes.

Zane's answer to his problem was to take two weeks of vacation and work on the condo twelve hours a day including weekends. It was a lot of work and he made mistakes in what he had to do and the order in which he had to do them. Also, he found that the whole air conditioning system had to be replaced which meant several thousand dollars of unplanned expenses.

Using his realtor, Zane put the condo on the market before it was completely finished. Surprisingly, it was a curious walkthrough neighbor that wanted to buy the place for his mother. Zane told the prospective buyer to bring his mother to the condo and she could pick out the colors and the carpeting.

When Zane was through with his renovations, the condo was better than new: new tile in the kitchen and bathrooms, new wooden floors, new cabinetry, new stainless-steel appliances and, of course, a new air conditioning system. The new owner was willing to pay the asking price of two-hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Zane had put forty thousand dollars into fixing the place up. That included paying expert journeymen for a first-class job the in tiling, flooring, electrical work and HVAC.

After paying the real estate commission and a little in closing costs, Zane walked away with thirty-five thousand dollars after only three months of work. He could have made more if he had done things differently but he was happy with his first investment. And, he vowed not to make the same mistakes again.

There are numerous seminars throughout the year that deal with flipping properties. Zane attended many of them before he invested in another property. Most importantly, he learned about "hard money bankers". These organizations of investors specialize in lending money, including fix-up costs, to property renovators. Just submit your proposal along with cost of purchase, renovation estimates and comps, and if they approved your project, you get your money. The downside is they charge a very high interest rate—as high a fifteen percent. They might also charge points. However, if your project takes only four months to complete, the interest you pay is only five percent. And too, these loans are processed very fast, sometimes in a matter of days. This eliminates the endless paperwork and lengthy time require for a bank loan.

In order to locate properties that were ideal for purchase, Zane became a realtor. That way, he had access to the Multiple Listing Service. He could find candidate properties on the internet, visit them and let himself inside with his lockbox card and inspect them before making an offer. He could also research comps by himself and find out how much similar homes were valued. Most importantly, he could pay himself the real estate commission both when he bought the property and when he sold it.

Over the next few years, Zane bought, renovated and sold many properties. He started on small, less expensive condos, worked up to large townhomes and eventually bread and butter family homes. He saved his profits and used them to make bigger down payments while taking out smaller loans. Eventually, he had enough of a war chest to buy his homes for cash. This speeded up the sale process immensely and allowed him to buy properties from anxious sellers at rock bottom prices.

Also, Zane did less and less work on the properties himself. He had a good contractor with a crew of expert workers. They soon learned what Zane preferred in the way of flooring, carpeting, fixtures, colors, etc. and Zane could pretty much show them the property and then just let them do their thing. He was able to get his renovations done at a rock bottom price because he was able to keep the contractor and his team working full time. Zane's job became that of finding the properties, buying them and then turning them over to his contractor. Sometimes, he had two or three properties at once all in different stages of repair.

By the time this story begins, Zane had a net worth of over a million dollars, most of it in cash. His yearly income fluctuated with the economy and the whims of the real estate market but was almost always in the six-figures range. Much of it he put back into his cash account so he could buy his properties for cash. However, he lived simply and economically in an upper middle-class home and few of his friends or family knew his true worth.

Five years after he became a wheeler-dealer, Zane married the former Miss Bryce Beaumont. Bryce was an extremely attractive woman four years his junior. Her family was well off and Bryce was their only child. However, they never looked down on Zane and his lack of education because they knew he made a more-than-adequate income and came to understand that their daughter and Zane were madly in love with each other. In fact, they admired him a great deal.

Zane and Bryce had three daughters: Andrea, Angelica and Ashley. All of them were grown, out of the house and married with young children. However, only Andrea lived nearby—about a two-hour drive. They all made it a ritual to get together on important holidays: Christmas and New Year's, the Fourth of July and Thanksgiving.

Bryce worked as a material manager for a manufacturing company. It was her job to ensure that the resources required for daily operations were ordered on time and available when need. It involved hundreds and hundreds of items. She dealt with dozens of venders and suppliers every month. She was good at her job and she enjoyed it very much.

On the day it all started, a Friday, Zane had just closed on another house. It was a lower middle-class home in a mixed-race neighborhood of blue-collar, working people. The previous owners had been an older couple who had lived there for more than thirty years. Unfortunately, the gentleman had recently passed away. The couple's children, who lived fifteen-hundred miles away, had agreed that they were going to take their aging mother with them and find a place for her in an assisted living facility near their home. However, they had to deal with the couple's home. The real estate agent with whom they were working, an associate of Zane's, pointed out that the home was not very saleable. It was rundown and badly in need of repairs. He suggested they contact Zane for a possible sale to him as a renovator. Zane was invited to the house to look around. He had a practiced eye for the major elements of a house that needed renovation: The foundation, the roof, the electrical system and the HVAC system—all needed restoration. He also checked the exterior. He found the backyard walls cracked, pot holes in the driveway and weeds in the yard instead of grass. Finally, he noted that the house still had all the old furniture in it, the kitchen was crammed with pots and pans and cooking utensils and dishes. And too, the two-car garage was filled with lawn furniture, tools, foldout tables and large amount of cooking and serving equipment. Apparently, the old couple had been in the catering business at one time.

The old couple's children knew that, according to the comps, similar homes were valued at three-hundred and fifteen-thousand dollars. Zane pointed out that they would have to invest at least fifty-thousand dollars and three months of their time to renovate the house. He went on to explain that if he were to buy it, he needed to make a profit of fifty-thousand dollars to make this purchase worth his time. Therefore, the best he could offer them was two-hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Further, he told them he would buy the house for cash and he would take the responsibility of clearing out all unwanted chattels.

Since the house had been paid for many years ago, that meant the children would divide a profit of two-hundred and fifty-thousand dollars minus closing costs. Further, using Zane's settlement attorney, they could close within five days.

The children did not have to think long about the offer. They took it right away. Closing took place the following Friday at 2PM and Zane walked out of the closing agent's office with the keys at 3:30PM.

Since it was late afternoon, rather than go by his office, Zane decided to go straight home. He thought maybe he would take Bryce out to celebrate another successful purchase as he did when he bought or sold any of his properties.

Bryce's car was in the garage when he arrived home which was a surprise because she was not normally home at that hour. She was not there to greet him as he came through the door. Zane, as he often did upon returning home, pored himself two straight shots of Captain Morgan spiced rum to help take the edge off of his day. While doing so, he heard the shower running upstairs. After taking off his sport coat, loosening up his tie and rolling up his sleeves, he proceeded upstairs to announce his presence.

Upon stepping into his spacious bedroom, he stopped short. Laid out on the bed were two cocktail dresses, one black and one red. Also on the bed were two sets of bras and panties matching in color to the dresses. On the floor beneath the dresses were matching CFM high-heeled shoes. Draped across the stool of Bryce's make-up table was a pair of black, fishnet, thigh-high hoes. Looking around some more, Zane noted a bright red lipstick had been place on Bryce's make-up table along with the bottle of her most expensive perfume—that Zane had given to her as an anniversary gift several years before.

"What the fuck is going on?" Zane said to himself.

Zane decided to sit down and wait in the sitting area of the bedroom for his wife to come out of the bathroom. When Bryce emerged the bathroom, she was wrapped in a towel and her air was similarly wrapped. She did not see Zane sitting motionless off to the side. She proceeded to sit down on the chair of her make-up stand and powder her arms, shoulders and legs. When Bryce took the towel off of her head and shook out her curls, Zane could see that she had been to the hair salon and had her hair in luscious curls and locks. Also, he observed that her fingernails were painted bright red.

"What's going on?" Zane asked in a relatively normal voice.

Bryce jumped and let out a little shriek. "Zane, you scared me. I didn't know you were home."

"I closed a deal early this afternoon," Zane answered, "and decided to come home rather than returned to the office and do nothing.

"I thought I might take my wife out to dinner to celebrate the closing. It has been several weeks since I have done that. I get the impression, however, that you already have plans. So, I ask you again... What's going on?"

"Yes, Honey," she replied, "I do have plans for this evening. I'm going out to dinner with a friend."

Zane's insides were starting to knot up but he maintained his casual comportment. "I would guess from the clothes you have laid out that you are not going out with a girlfriend, but rather a man. Further, since I see you have your dancing shoes out, that you are intending to go dancing, too. Is that right?"

"Yes, Dear," Bryce responded. "We thought maybe we would go dancing as well to fill out the evening."

"May I ask just who is this friend you are going to have a date with?"

"Oh, it is just a friend of mine from work. His name is Harvey Wrankle. Actually, it isn't from work. He's a salesman that represents the company from which we buy all of our paper. He comes into town once a month, stays overnight and then returns to Chicago. He always takes the time to talk with me and the last couple of times he has come to town, we have gone out to lunch together. He is a very nice man, very polite and considerate.

"And," Bryce quickly added, "it's not an actual date. It's mostly just dinner and conversation with a friend."

Zane could tell that Bryce was going to be evasive about her date so he decided to circle the subject and bring out her intentions indirectly.

"Which dress are you going to wear?" Zane asked.

"I just can't decide. Maybe you could give me an idea of what you think I would look best in."

"Well..." Zane started. "The red one would certainly get any man's attention. It might be too flashy for a first date even though it would go well with your lipstick and nails. But there's no way a man can resist the alure of a sexy black cocktail dress."

He went on. "I think it's been forever since you dressed up that fancy for me, even for our date nights. What is so special?"

"The black one it is," Bryce stated and didn't answer his question.

Zane considered for a minute that it really had been a long time since Bryce had been dressed so sexy for a date. Then, he admonished himself. It had been a long time since he had suggested they step out together for a really fancy night on the town that included dancing. He had gotten into the routine of taking his wife out for dinner whenever he bought or sold a home, but it was usually to a nice, local place such as Clyde's or the Red Lobster or TGI Fridays. And it had been forever since he had taken her dancing.

Zane had finished his spiced rum but felt he needed another. He excused himself saying that he would be back directly. Downstairs, he refilled his glass and thought about what was transpiring. His wife obviously had a date tonight—a hot date. She was trying to minimize the impact that her actions might have on Zane by glossing it over and making him believe this was just dinner at some local restaurant with a casual friend. Obviously, from the manner in which she was preparing for her date, it was much more than that. Zane did not know why she thought she could just fade this by him... but she was trying.

When he returned to their bedroom, Bryce had already put on her bra and panties and was now stretching her long curvaceous legs into her thigh-high hoes.

"Those are new, aren't they?" Zane asked.

"I just bought them today. I thought they would really look good with a cocktail dress that is slit up to the thigh."

"You've haven't dressed that way for me in a long time," said Zane. "Why the special enticing ensemble for a casual friend?" Zane asked casually.

"I just wanted to look nice," was all the Bryce answered trying to make as though it was nothing exceptional but not doing a very good job of it.

"You know," Zane said, "that your breasts are more than adequate to fill out the black dress without a bra if you wanted to look especially sexy. You would just have to be careful when you bend over that you don't fall out of your dress."

"I hadn't really thought of that, Zane," Bryce responded. I was worried that my bra would show to prominently in either of these dresses. I will do that and be careful, like you said."

Zane discerned that Bryce now felt that he was unopposed to her plans to go out this evening with her new friend. It made her want to include him even more in assisting her in the preparations for her night out. Apparently, she even thought that Zane might be getting a thrill of his own at the prospect of his wife with a stranger. She was very wrong.

"I was going to wear a diamond neckless with matching earrings. What do you think?"

"I think you ought to stick to a theme of black to match your dress," Zane said enthusiastically. "I suggest your black sapphire pendent. I would hang just between your breasts like a hypnotic amulet. And, you should wear the matching black sapphire earrings."